Fun Fun Fun Fest Preview

Of Montreal

With a catalog that brandishes every pop trick in the book, Kevin Barnes steers Athens, Ga.'s Of Montreal down brashly darker paths with Hissing Fauna. Spitting and abrasive, the album's unnervingly bitter as Barnes exorcises demons through contorted arrangements and synth beats jarringly manhandled. The group's nerdy, tongue-in-cheek lyrics still flow freely under the more sinister weight, lines like "Physics makes us all its bitches" ("Gronlandic Edit") almost parodying dance rock's hypersexualized aesthetic as Barnes wages battle between mind and body, especially in the manic-depressive chemical ode "Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse." "Suffer for Fashion" offers an accessible entry to the disc, even spiked with a trembling glam falsetto that resurfaces throughout, but the nearly 12-minute centerpiece of "The Past Is a Grotesque Animal" dominates with a droning dance rhythm accompanying Barnes' uncomfortable confessional. "Let's tear this shit apart," he shouts, and shreds so thoroughly as to leave little in his rankling wake. (6:30pm, Stage 1)